ROLAND FR-3S PIANO ACCORDION

Advantages: TOO MANY TO LIST!!!
Disadvantages: BELLOWS CAN BE A BIT STIFF WHEN NEW.

...The Roland fr-3s is the little brother to the fr-7 V-accordion, yet it is no small fry having a full 120 bass section, with seven registers and keyboard of 37 treble keys with ten registers and a dazzling array of features and sounds, it is lightweight and fully portable due to the built-in speakers and battery option. (It takes ten AA size battery's if you would want to use this function, and lasts up to two and a half hours depending on the batteries used.) Although I do generally plug mine into the mains. The electronic wizardry in this instrument means you can select from ten different accordion types, each with its own associated registers and to the ear is indistinguishable from its acoustic cousins, and as if that was not enough, it boasts several orchestral sounds including violin, steel guitar and choir. The fr-3s also has...

oakleigh 19.03.2007 · Read review
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Review of Roland FR-3s V Accordion

THE PIANO TEACHER - (LA PIANISTE)

Advantages: Excellent physcological study of character.
Disadvantages: Grim, brutal, shocking scenes of a sexual nature.

... The Piano Teacher The Piano Teacher is a subtitled film of the Phycological Drama genre. Released in 2001 it is also known by it's French name La pianiste. Directed by Michael Haneke, it is based on the novel by Die Klavierspielerin which won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. Graphic in it's content this film delves into the darker side of sex, including fetishism, bondage, and sado/masochism. It also touches on the delicate subject of genitalia self harm. This is not a light film, and is not recommended for family viewing. ~ I will be reviewing FILM ONLY Synopsis This is a tale revolving around a professor at a music conservatory in Vienna. Her name is Erica and she is played played by the wonderful actress Isabelle Huppert, Who has an impressive 75+ films under her belt. Erica is...

Morning_Becomes_Electra 20.01.2008 (25.01.2008) · Read review
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Review of The Piano Teacher

Let the piano do the talking

Advantages: interesting story, excellent acting,
Disadvantages: expected more

...I went into this movie knowing about the oscars it had won and having been recommended by several friends, I expected something good. As a fan of period films, this movie is set in the 1850's, New Zealand. Ada (Holly Hunter) is a mute who with her young daughter Flora(Ann Paquin) braves the dangerous journey across the world. We see the movie start with them landing with all their belongings, including the priceless piano. Life begins in the leafy forest with her new Husband, Stewart (Sam Neill). Life is not what she expected in this remote area. Things take a turn for the worse when her new Husband sells her piano a neighbour, George (Harvey Keitel). George however, tells Ada she may earn back her piano by giving him piano lessons. Through the lessons, we see a turbulant but intreging relationship form. This movie wasn't what I...

rafomania 16.11.2009 · Read review
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Review of The Piano (DVD)

The Piano

Advantages: A great film to watch, a very emotional film which is gripping to watch..
Disadvantages: none

...The film, The Piano, is a film that tells a story about a young woman’s journey from oppression to freedom. The main character, Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), is sold off in marriage to marry Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neil) and is thus sent away from her home to New Zealand. She is accompanied by her 9 year old daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin) and her beloved piano. When Ada arrives on the beach of the New Zealand coast she is dressed in black dress and bonnet standing beside her beloved piano (her daughter on top), Ada provides a stark contrast with the vast backdrop of the crashing sea and grey skies. Ada has not spoken ever since her lover was killed by lightning. She communicates through her piano and sign language, understood by her daughter. The way in which she uses the piano reflects her mood in a very strong and clear manner...

silvajade 27.07.2004 · Read review
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Review of The Piano (DVD)

Experience with Roland EP-77

Advantages: modifiability, portable
Disadvantages: need of electricity

...I have been playing the piano for several years, each week going to a class, hard training all the time, concerts, and once, I got for Christmas this new invention. --- Advantages --- I didn't know at all what to expect. Before, I occasionally played for fun on keyboard. So I thought that it is comparable to such quality = not having a real size of a usual wooden piano. The other thing is that the number of keys, the low bass and high tones are usually missing on such a digital piano. But as I saw it then packed out, I starred on it with an open mouth because the keys had the usual size of a USUAL piano. What I really started to like on Roland EP-77 it was the fact that it is portable. - Several times it happened to me that I couldn't play the big piano at certain occasions because I cannot just put this instrument into my pocket...

Lirybka 31.12.2007 (30.12.2007) · Read review
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Review of Roland EP-77

Roland GR-20 Guitar Synthesizer

Advantages: Some very realistic synthetic sounds at an affordable price.
Disadvantages: Requires a lot of fine tuning.

...Background: I bought this pedal in Japan for £290. The Roland GR-20 is renowned for it's value for money. For this price you get: The GR-20 Synthesizer GK-3 Dedicated Pickup + Cable (to connect the GK-3 to GR-20) Power Supply Unit Short Guitar Lead Instruction Manuals Warranty Screws, tapes etc... to attach GK-3 to your guitar The pedal is very versatile and also comes with an in-built tuner. Installation: The GK-3 needs to be installed on your guitar before you can use the pedal. Ideally the GK-3 should be around 1mm away from your strings and should not be installed further than 1cm away from the bridge. The GK-3 has two main parts. The main body, which has the up/down buttons (to scroll through the patches) and a volume knob, and the pickup itself. The pickup can either be installed using screws...

Darkhodge 29.10.2005 · Read review
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Review of Roland GR-20

The Piano

Advantages: Great tunes
Disadvantages: Recorded quality and overall blandness

...Jane Campion's The Piano is about a mute-by-choice Scotswoman Ada played by Holly Hunter (who won an Oscar for her performance). She journeys to the jungles of nineteenth-century New Zealand to marry a man she's never met, played by Sam Neill. Once there, she is horrified to find her beloved piano left on the beach until a man named Baines (Harvey Keitel) offers to let her play it in exchange for romantic favours. The music was composed by Michael Nyman, noted as a modernist and a minimalist. This is by far the most popular of Nyman's compositions, because of its easily accessible melodies and especially for the solo piano music. Nyman writes: "I began creating Ada a folio of material that I imagined she had in her head, that her fingers carried around with her, almost as if she had been the composer of it. It had to be "possible" mid...

berlioz 05.05.2004 (06.05.2004) · Read review
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Review of Nyman: The Piano Original Soundtrack

THREE GOOFS AND A PIANO!

Advantages: Great 'life affirming' read
Disadvantages: None I`ve found

...a little promise. One day I would find a romantic location somewhere and install myself therein with a piano, devoting my time to reaching my fullest potential on this instrument." But why did he want a house abroad? Well, ever since his early efforts on the piano as a teenager Hawks had always dreamt of owning a little home in the middle of nowhere and installing a piano in it. There he could practice to his hearts content surrounded by the clean air and idyllic surroundings he thought necessary to inspire the best from him. Of course this being Tony Hawks he didn't go about things the easy way - having purchased a house he decided it would be more of an ethereal experience to transport the piano from London himself. What follows can best be described as a catalogue of comical incidents reminiscent of a Laurel and Hardy film as Hawks...

tractor-boy 14.09.2006 (21.10.2008) · Read review
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Review of A Piano in the Pyrenees - Tony Hawks

Pi-a pi-a pi-ano!

Advantages: Not too bulky, can use headphones, weighted keys
Disadvantages: control button under the piano

...Some of you will know that I am a professional musician and instrumental teacher. You might also know that I got married last year to a fellow opinionator and moved to Devon, which is where he lived. For the first year I still had to "commute" to Hampshire to teach a couple of days a week. This meant that I had to leave my beautiful Bechstein upright piano behind. This meant that I needed an instrument to practise on in Devon but it had to be something on which I could teach for eighteen months whilst separated from my "real" piano. John, not long after we became engaged bought me a lovely present. It was a Roland HP 137R digital piano. Obviously any electric, digital piano is not going to compare to a really good upright or grand acoustic piano but there are times when it isn't possible to have a "real" piano and these can be...

water-witch 29.09.2004 · Read review
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Review of Roland HP-137

Roland XP10

Advantages: versatile keyboard useful for both studio and live work,
Disadvantages: User / Preset switching manual not auto

...the lights go down. There are a couple of functions that I have never used, for instance the Arpeggio and the Split keyboard functions but they are not necessary in the work I do. The range of instruments sampled is good to excellent but some of them are also quite poor and not particularly faithful reproductions. In particular the best ones (in my opinion) are the Piano sounds, the guitar sounds and the drum sounds, most of the Pad sounds. The middle ones being the strings and brass sounds particularly the ensemble sets. By far and away the poorest sounds (and those that i think are not really necessary on a keyboard such as this) are the SFX sounds, the Sitar and the Accordion. The drum samples give a wide range of kits, covering Rock to Jazz, Electronic to Brush, when recorded some of them are quite obviously keyboard...

davethemerlin 20.10.2002 · Read review
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Review of Roland XP-10